With a standard one containing 15.5 gallons of beer (and costing around $80), a keg is one of the most cost effective and fun ways to mix up your party. After all, with a keg, no one’s stashing their case of Bud Light in the corner, or having to carry around their half-full bottle of wine; it’s much more communal. You just never know what attractive party-goer you’ll meet while you’re pouring your crew some refills. 15.5 gallons, depending on the party size, could be an awful lot of alcohol…or, your party could be like the one I attended last …

Though Labor Day has passed, I’m not ready to say goodbye to summer quite yet. The weather might be getting cooler, but I’m in denial. I’m still enjoying the corn, peaches, tomatoes, and warm summer evenings. As long as summer produce is still here, I see no need to start cooking with squash and apples. Instead, I’m taking advantage of late summer’s bounty by slow roasting tomatoes, devouring slices of watermelon, and snacking on raspberries. But my current favorite summer recipe is not a dish, but a cocktail.

I have fond memories of going to the drive-in movies with my parents on summer nights. We’d drive twenty minutes to a field in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania (or so it felt). We’d be dressed in our pajamas, with pillows and blankets in tow.

We’d pop the trunk and fold down the back seats of our sedan (we thought it was so cool to sit in the trunk) and tune to the right radio station just in time for the corny commercials. The first movie was always family friendly, but I tried really hard to …

I used to think I wasn’t a beer person. But then a wise friend urged me not to dismiss beer so fast, and encouraged me to diversify my drinking portfolio. While I have full respect for the girls who drink Guinness upon Guinness (as I recently bore witness to at the Bear pub in Oxford) I have yet to embrace a full bodied dry stout. Let me just say that I’m no beer snob—I credit the wells of Keystone Light up at school for that. But with the privilege of summer vacation and the added pocket money from my summer gig, I figure that these are the weeks to get out and try new brands.

This is the first time I’ve ever believed a beverage could hold its own in a food fight.

See, the thing is–I’m just really not much of a beverage kinda gal. Sure, I enjoy a good thirst quencher from time to time, but on a day-to-day basis, I’m all about a simple bottle of water. Fork trumps straw any day.

It’s a fact of life, I tell ya. But every now and then, a drink so mind-blowing comes along that you find yourself at a fork in the road. Do I drink my calories, or do I eat them?

Alcohol-infused ice pops.Wait, but alcohol doesn’t freeze…right? Actually, Erin Nichols shows that you can with hercocktail-inspired ice pop recipes. The secret? Cook most of the liquor off while retaining the flavor.

I was ecstatic to be chosen as the SKC contributor to review this book! My 21st birthday is in a few weeks, and I have been waiting for this day more than ever. Graduating from college as a 20-year-old really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…especially when you couldn’t legally drink with your friends during college and still can’t drink with them after graduation.

Generally, a person’s twenty-first birthday (at least in the States) is chock full of booze, booze, and more booze. But there’s only so much wine, beer, and hard liquor that a single individual can ingest… at least as a beverage.

I mean, what’s more adult-like than walking into a liquor store (REAL I.D. in hand) and buying a handle of Bailey’s Irish Cream? Answer: buying Bailey’s to bake into a wicked indulgence, of course! Above all, the best part about this dessert (maybe even better …

I don’t know how to make many cocktails. Actually, if rum and coke doesn’t count as a cocktail, then I know how to make one cocktail. I’m more of a beer and wine connoisseur – thanks to a college experience filled with gin buckets and drinks called “bong water,” liquor was not my beverage of choice. Then I learned about the champagne cocktail. She’s classy, sparkly and she comes in slender champagne flute. If I were a drink, I’d want to be the champagne cocktail.

Don’t be fooled, just because there’s no liquor in these cocktails doesn’t mean you …

I never used to be a coffee person. For a long time I just saw it as a bitter and unappealing beverage that my parents gulped down every morning. Occasionally in high school I’d order a fancy sounding caramel macchiato to see if maybe my taste buds had matured yet, but all that did was leave me with a caffeine-induced headache and a bad taste in my mouth. Even when I first started college, the best I could do was a mug of hot chocolate with a splash of coffee to wake me up for 8am class. And in the …

No matter the occasion, you want your drink to pack at least a little punch. I’m not saying you want to end a brunch accompanied by Bloody Marys dancing on a table with a lampshade on your head. But you do at least want to know you’re drinking alcohol. Otherwise you’d be casually sipping at your umbrella-ed mocktail, right?

And what better way to indulge your boozy craving for a powerful drink than a cocktail named for a gun? I mean, it’s bound to have a little kick, don’t you think? The French 75, named after the 75-millimeter M1897 artillery …